Chapter 5: The Breaking Point
The flicker died. Whatever it was, it drowned in the whisky and the twenty years behind it, and Hamish's face went hard as slate.
He brought his knee up and shoved. Dougal, ribs already screaming, toppled sideways off his brother's chest. Before he could find a handhold, Hamish was straddling him, one forearm across his throat, pressing down just enough.
"You looked at me like I was something to feel sorry for," Hamish said, close to his ear. His breath was sour with drink. "Nobody looks at me like that."
Dougal got a hand free and pushed at Hamish's jaw, and Hamish caught the wrist and slammed it down, pinned it under his knee.
"You want to be a man tonight?" Hamish's eyes were black with rage. "Right then. Men take what's coming to them."
He hit Dougal again in the ribs. And again. Not fast now. Deliberate. Each blow a small lesson, taught slow.
Dougal's other hand grabbed a fistful of Hamish's shirt but his grip loosened with every impact. His legs stopped trying to buck. Somewhere in the rhythmic punches, he stopped fighting.
Hamish kept on a little longer anyway. Three more. Four. Until Dougal's face was a slack thing beneath him, blood from his nose pooling dark on the slate, spreading slow toward the hearthstones.
Then Hamish sat back on his haunches, chest heaving. He looked down at his brother the way a man looks at a job finished. He wiped his knuckles on Dougal's shirt front, stood, and stepped over him on his way to the bedroom door.
"Tomorrow you'll shift the ewes yourself," he said, not turning. "Both pastures. You'll be fit for it, or you'll be fit for less. Up to you."
The bedroom door closed. The storm outside had thinned to a steady hiss on the thatch. Dougal lay where he'd been left, one eye swollen shut, the other open to the ceiling beams, and did not move.